Plane with 4 Indians on board missing in Nepal
KATHMANDU: A small passenger plane operated by a private airline went missing in mountainous Nepal on Sunday with 22 people, including four Indian nationals, on board during cloudy weather, and officials said search teams had been sent to the site of a fire spotted by local residents.
State-owned Nepal Television said villagers had seen an aircraft on fire at the source of the Lyanku Khola River at the foot of the Himalayan mountain Manapathi, in a district bordering Tibet.
The Twin Otter 9N-AET plane belonging to Nepal’s Tara Air took off at 10:15 am from Pokhara for a 20-minute flight, and lost contact with the control tower 15 minutes later, according to an airline spokesperson.
A Nepal Army helicopter carrying 10 soldiers and two employees of the civil aviation authority landed on the bank of a river near the Narshang Monastery, the possible site of the crash, Prem Nath Thakur, general manager of the Tribhuvan International Airport, said.
“Ground search teams are proceeding toward that direction,” Tara Air spokesperson Sudarshan Gartaula said, referring to the fire site. “It could be a fire by villagers or by cowherds. It could be anything.”
The airplane was located after Nepal Telecom tracked down the cellphone of the airplane’s pilot Captain Prabhakar Ghimire through the Global Positioning System (GPS) network.
“The cell phone of Captain Ghimire of the missing aircraft has been ringing and Nepal Army’s helicopter has landed in the possible accident area after tracking the captain’s phone from Nepal Telecom,” Thakur said. “We have also sent Nepal Army and Nepal Police personnel on foot for the search,” he added. Chief District Officer of Myagdi Chiranjibi Rana told The
Kathmandu Post newspaper that bad weather has hampered the search efforts at the site where the plane was last spotted by the locals. According to him, locals reported that the plane made two circles at Khaibang and headed to Kiti Danda near Lete Pass (2,500m).
“A team of police has been mobilised at the site. The site is a 12-hour walk from Lete,” he said. “There are no human settlements in the area where locals last spotted the plane.”
Officials said cloudy weather was preventing search helicopters from flying into the area. “One search helicopter returned to Jomsom due to bad weather without locating the plane,” the civil aviation authority of Nepal said in a statement.
“Helicopters are ready to take off for search from Kathmandu, Pokhara and Jomsom once weather conditions improve. Army and police search teams have left towards the site.”
Apart from the four Indians, two Germans, 13 Nepali passengers and a three-member Nepali crew were on the plane, said Gartaula. The airline issued the list of passengers which identified four Indians as Ashok Kumar Tripathi, Dhanush Tripathi, Ritika Tripathi, and Vaibhawi Tripathi.
“Tara Air flight 9NAET that took off from Pokhara at 9.55 AM today with 22 people onboard, including 4 Indians, has gone missing. Search and rescue operation is on. The embassy is in touch with their family”, the Indian embassy in Nepal tweeted. The aircraft crew was led by captain Prabhakar Prasad Ghimire. Utsav Pokhrel is the co-pilot while Kismi Thapa is the air hostess, My Republica newspaper reported, quoting Pokhara Airport Information Officer Dev Raj Adhikari.